Feb. 15th, 2007

09:38 am - Anne Frank's family denied visa to the U.S.

Comments:

How do you know any of those things would continue to be the case, given open borders?

c) We don't deprive people of their freedom to read, or practice their religion, or own guns even though some people write pernicious books, choose to join cults, or shoot up schoolyards.

Much of the rest of the world does do those things. If that segment of the world is allowed to be freely immigrate, what guarantee do you offer that they would not continue to do those things here? The same kind of argument-by-assertion you're offering in the rest of this thread?

b) I don't have direct evidence. However, Britain seems quite concerned about the "brain drain" of skilled workers (doctors, engineers, programmers) to the U.S. Yet the differences between the U.S. and the U.K. are relatively small compared to the differences between the opportunities in the U.S. and typical terrorist sponsor, so I would expect the "brain drain" effect would be even larger for those countries.

c) It's theoretically possible that immigrant Islamists, etc would try to vote themselves sharia law, attack the Jews, blow up buildings, etc. However, surveys of Arab opinion toward the U.S. suggest that hostility to the U.S. arises more from U.S. foreign policy than it does from hostility to U.S. culture and values, particularly among the young. And it seems to me that those most likely to immigrant will be the young, and those already most favorable to the U.S. Also, if young muslims were allowed to flee, it would be more difficult for radical ideologies like Al Queda to indoctrinate them.

d) This seems obvious to me, but I don't have any direct evidence to support it.

"During the past 30 years, Solomon Polachek, an economist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, has researched the relationship between trade and peace. In his most recent paper on the topic, he and co-author Carlos Seiglie of Rutgers University review the massive amount of research on trade, war, and peace.

They find that "the overwhelming evidence indicates that trade reduces conflict." Likewise for foreign investment. The greater the amounts that foreigners invest in the United States, or the more that Americans invest abroad, the lower is the likelihood of war between America and those countries with which it has investment relationships.

Professors Polachek and Seiglie conclude that, "The policy implication of our finding is that further international cooperation in reducing barriers to both trade and capital flows can promote a more peaceful world."

As for the riots in France, I think those have to do with France's socialist labor policies than they have to do with immigrants per se. According to Becker

"Immigrants, youths, and other new entrants into the labor market have been hurt the most since they have had the greatest difficulty finding jobs. The overall French unemployment rate is now almost 9 per cent- compared to about 5 per cent in the US- with a rate over 20 per cent for young persons. About 40 per cent of the unemployed have been without a regular job for over a year, a rate that is far higher than the American long-term unemployment rate. The French have intentionally avoided collecting separate economic data on Muslims, but the Muslim unemployment rate is estimated by labor economists in France at more than 20 per cent, with the unemployment rate for young Muslims probably exceeding 30 per cent."